Here’s the thing about Leonardo da Vinci: people think he was born a genius. The truth? He wasn’t. He was born curious. His genius came from his obsession with his Circle of Competence—a razor-thin boundary that expanded only as fast as his relentless curiosity allowed. He painted, sure. But painting was just one layer of a deeper obsession: to understand everything within his reach. Anatomy, physics, botany—da Vinci wasn’t some scatterbrained polymath. He was deliberate, disciplined. He stayed in his lane, dissecting corpses to paint muscles with accuracy that’d make a surgeon blush. He didn’t dabble. He dove.
The Circle of Competence isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about knowing your limits. Warren Buffett says it best: “You don’t have to be an expert in every company, or even many. You only have to evaluate those within your circle.” It’s tempting to spread yourself thin, to be the jack-of-all-trades because the world tells you that’s how you stay relevant. But relevance is overrated. What matters is depth.
Let’s be real: most of us are terrified of the boundary lines, petrified by the thought that sticking to what we know makes us “less than.” The artist is supposed to be wild and free, right? A rebel, unchained by limitations. But da Vinci, the ultimate Renaissance rebel, thrived because he respected the edges of his circle. He pushed them, yes. But he didn’t pretend to know what he didn’t. And that’s the secret. You don’t expand your competence by leaping into the unknown. You expand it by mastering the known, one hard-earned insight at a time.
The Circle of Competence isn’t just a mental model for investors or business sharks—it’s a survival guide for creatives. You want to innovate? Start with what you actually know, not what you wish you did. Because that’s where your power is.